orendalogs | IT'S YOUR DESTINY!!!

Did he know? Maybe he didn't. Maybe that all tied back to him viewing things more trivially than he should have. It quieted Aoba again, at least for a few moments.

"... Maybe I don't," he admitted, since keeping his opinions to himself had already been remarked upon. Let's see if he could avoid falling into that pitfall again.

"Everything has happened so fast on my end, I keep assuming things will continue that way. The portals that go from Midorijima, to Steelport, to the City, are just one long walk now that I know that path. I guess that's my own kind of hopefulness, like yours is for the Earth going back to normal. You tell me not to be sad about how the Earth is now, so... is it really that different from not being sad until I see you again?"

"Yes. It's different," Declan replied softly, shifting a bit, still gazing out at the starry fields.

"You don't think about the Earth as it is right now and think 'So what's the point of going on?' but when I think about never seeing you again, I worry that the all that brightness won't come back into my life and I'll just...fight on, because I don't know anything else. It isn't fair of me to put that weight on you, and it isn't for you to fix...but it is different."

And there went the heat in Aoba's cheeks again, though it was dull and dampened by concern into something more like shame than outright embarrassment. Because yeah, okay, that was pretty different. He'd really affected Declan that much, huh....

But the Guardian wouldn't come with him, and Aoba couldn't stay. Not until he'd gotten home and made sure everyone was okay, and that they would be okay in his future absences.

"You're not forcing a weight on my shoulders if it's one I don't mind bearing," Aoba told him, an unwittingly Reason-esque mirror of something Desire had said before. "I'm going to come back someday."

Maybe he was too trivial. Maybe he still had plenty more things to think about it. But it hadn't changed that it was what he wanted to do.

"I believe you will," he replied with a slow nod, looking down at his hands for a moment, rubbing thumbs and forefingers together, the gloves creaking softly. He honestly did believe Aoba would return, and while he didn't have any particular time frame, he didn't believe it would be too long, either. Then again, "too long" was a nebulous estimate, at best, particularly for someone who could be as infuriatingly patient as the Titan.

"Maybe when you come back, the fight will already be over?" he remarked, smirking faintly. Even he wasn't naive enough to believe that for a second, but why not play optimistic?

"If everything were better here...would you do it the other way?" he asked, genuinely curious, glancing over at Aoba again. "Would you bring everything you care about here instead?"

Huh. Now there was an angle of it Aoba hadn't considered. He was quiet briefly, doing just that.

"If we assume that anyone I asked would be willing to come... I absolutely would, I think. For all that you say humanity achieved even greater than this before the war began, you're still leagues better now than things are back home. There's more space, more advances... and if there were no war, people could go anywhere they wanted. Not be stuck in cramped Districts with gangs fighting over territory and other stupid things like that."

He crossed his arms a little, wondering. "It's hard to imagine Granny leaving that little house, or Koujaku giving up all the attention he gets doing women's hair. Mizuki has his tattoo parlor. I'm a junk shop clerk. Haga-san has been kind to me, but it's not exactly a classy job when you think about it. Except for them, I really don't have anything tying me down, but I think it would be different for them."

"Your Granny could have a house in the countryside here," he mused, just fantasizing for the sake of it, being that they had the freedom to do so.

"Anywhere, really, but the air in the mountains is good for the elderly. People still need their hair done here. And tattoos, and junk shops. This world seems different to you, but some things never change." He clucking his tongue in thought, gazing out the window again.

"It would be nice to meet Aoba's friends and family," he hummed, smiling softly. "The world that made you is important, too."

An amused chuff from Aoba, putting some cheer back in his mood. Declan did this daydreaming thing pretty well, huh? More proof that he was a much more thoughtful person than many other people seemed to realize.

“Well then put that one down along with the hope of the war being over by the time I get back,” he answered, borrowing off of the Guardian’s earlier suggestion. “Then there will be nothing stopping you from coming to visit my side of things, too. There aren’t nearly as many pretty things to see, but if you think my cooking is okay, then you’re absolutely going to go crazy for Granny’s.”

He nodded in agreement, choosing not to voice his concerns that his connection to the Light that kept him alive might be severed by exiting the world in which the Traveler sat nearby. He didn't know the potential ramifications of leaving, and while it would be worth the sacrifice to follow Aoba, he chose not to propose anything negative might come of it. Instead, he quieted, thinking about meeting an old woman, asking permission to take care of Aoba. Learning about the things he wouldn't say by asking his friends, walking the streets of the place Aoba called home.

He decided then that when Aoba left, he would fly back to Earth and seek out Midorijima. He would walk those streets, put his feet on the ground that the other man walked, a thousand and more years away. Perhaps that would ease the pain he knew he was going to feel?

"Aoba...write me, when you leave," he murmured, tilting his head and looking to the other man. "Think of a place you can write something and leave it for me to find today. Something in metal or stone, and hidden. And tell me where to look before you go. I can't write back...but it would put me at ease to know you were there."

“Huh?” Aoba looked back over at him, puzzled. The idea wasn’t fully articulated so at first Aoba thought, leave Declan another letter? Like the notes he’d left pinned in place by that first gifted crystal? Well, sure, that would be easy enough. But what did metal or stone have to do with—

Then something clicked and he realized, Declan maybe didn’t mean now. Maybe he actually meant, “You mean, like a time capsule? If…if I bury something in the past, it’ll survive to the future?”

Also if he decided (had decided) to do so, it would have to already exist. It would have existed even before the Aoba of now agreed to the idea, in fact. But Aoba didn’t have a head for time travel so this spin of paradoxes and certainties didn’t occur to him. The idea of a time capsule was achievement enough for his simpler mind.

Thinking about it for a moment, Declan nodded slowly.

"That would work, too. If you find something that hermetically seals strongly enough it shound last forever. I mean...the sealed tombs of the pharaohs were perfectly preserved in just stone. I imagine if you deal it and bury it deep enough it should be fine." Then he paused in thought and turned with a smile.

"We can buy something from a salvager in the Reef. You can carry your things home in it and then use it for a capsule later."

“Huh.” This time the sound was just thoughtful, rather than confused. Aoba didn’t have to ponder it very long before he was nodding, though.

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed, with more warmth than those brief little words might imply. Declan was smiling again, which in turn brought a mirror of it to Aoba’s own face. “I can do that for you. It’ll be fun. I mean, hopefully I won’t have too much time to spend filling it up with things before I’m headed back this way, but I’ll fill it up with as many things as I can think of.”

"It's something you can do every time you go home! We get you a different container and put it in a different place. Decide on a time for me to get it." He sighed, smiling, more relaxed about it all than he'd felt in a long time. They were making enormous assumptions about being in the same universe, but maybe faith was enough?

"That's the most comforting thought I've had since thinking about you leaving. I'm much less scared." Because yes, the murdermachine behemoth was scared.

Well color Aoba all shades of surprised. Sad he’d been told, lonely he understood, but scared? The arms Aoba still had crossed in thought tightened slightly around himself, subtly changing the gesture to a self-hug. As much as one should only expect to learn more and more things about another person when they’d really only known each other a short while, something about all of Declan’s surprise bits of depth just made Aoba more and more happy. He’d wanted to be a friend for the Guardian—and he was achieving exactly that.

Finally, Declan wasn’t talking like he’d never see Aoba again after this. Now it was planning, and expectation, just like it was for Aoba.

“Of course, I’ll bring you all kinds of things in person, too. Things that would survive a couple hours’ walk a lot better than a few ages in a box. If you can’t come to Granny’s cooking, then I’ll have to bring Granny’s cooking to you!”

"I'd like that very much. Should I...hm. I'll write a letter of apology before you go, too. Just in case. So if you go home and you've been missing a long time, we can at least explain some of it. I'll tell the truth. You were stuck in a warzone and it wasn't safe to send you home at first so we needed to wait until we had an escort plan. I'll apologize for keeping you and maybe it will help a little?" He nodded to himself, kitting his fingers together on his stomach and relaxing there, looking at the stars and imagining bridging the gaps of time and space so gently.

"While we're at the Reef I'll look for a nice gift for your grandmother. It's customary, right? Gifts for family elders?"

“I’m already going to have to explain this whole Chosen One business to her,” Aoba pointed out, a little less mirthfully. “Ren has pictures and things as evidence, but…okay. You can do that. I’ll have to read it to her unless you want some help writing it in Japanese, but I think once the…context is explained to her, she’d appreciate the gesture.”

But the offer of a gift got a short laugh out of him again, though. “As long as it’s not anything to make her feel like a family elder! That just makes her grumpy.”

"I can write in Japanese. I can learn anything. Our technology is much more advanced in regards to learning and teaching. I can learn while we're on this trip," he pointed out, gesturing vaguely.

"Common root languages are in all Ghost memories, since as Guardians we encounter a lot of different nationality recordings. I know Russian," Declan shrugged, before adding, "And everyone in the City speaks a pidgin language with English, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Arabic roots. It's very musical, actually." He hummed softly to himself, nodding in self-agreement. Yes, while he was alone in the hours Aoba rested during the trip between locations, he would endeavor to learn Japanese. It would be good to speak and write something familiar to the other man, even if he could obviously speak and read anything else on his own just fine.

"I wouldn't know what to get to make her feel old," the Titan admitted, tilting his head slightly. "The oldest person I know is The Speaker, and he's just like anyone else."

So…he didn’t want help? Aoba wasn’t sure if what he felt was disappointment, or if he just felt a little ignorant for assuming the language would prove a literal barrier. Being spontaneously understanding of all languages he might encounter as a Chosen had been remarkably convenient but—well, no matter. It was more important that Declan wanted to do it for Granny, and there was no way Aoba couldn’t take that as a sweet gesture on the Guardian’s part.

Better just to smile lopsidedly. “Then I think if you don’t know, I won’t risk messing things up by telling you. If you’re just thinking of her as someone like anyone else, then you’ll probably do just fine on your own. It’ll be a genuine, unbiased gift, straight from the heart.”

"Aren't all gifts supposed to be that way?" he asked, tilting his head a bit to look over at Aoba curiously. Well, biased maybe a little, at least in the sense that some gifts were supposed to convey more meaning than others. His gifts for Aoba would naturally be different from gifts he'd send to Aoba's grandmother, but that was because of personal feelings. When he looked at a thing and felt something in his chest acting funny and started thinking about Aoba, then he knew it was something he needed to get for the man. Would he feel the same about a gift for his Grandmother? He didn't think so...

Aoba was different.

"I'll try to pick something nice and useful, but not to blandly utilitarian. Pretty without...being a frippery? You think that would work?" Like what...slippers? That seemed kind of too impersonal. He'd have to find something lovely without being pointless. Like framed art. Art felt mostly pointless to him. He liked looking at beautiful, real things. Nature. People. Some artifacts that he admired for their age and purpose. Mac was a magpie. The things Declan picked up were different from the nonsensical baubles the Warlock liked. He retrieved things that made him think of other things, like Aoba. Something was beautiful because of the emotion it elicited, not because of the feeling it was designed to convey.

“Well there’s gifts you get because you’re expected to give one, because it’s polite, or traditional, or a holiday or something. A lot of times it’s really generic and boring, both getting and receiving gifts like that, because either no thought or only really shallow thought went into it.” Aoba shrugged, jostling his hammock-cocoon a bit. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. You sound like you have the right idea, anyway.”

With a bit of squirming, he freed one arm and held a hand out, roughly twenty centimeters below the top of his own head. “She’s about this tall against me, if you’re thinking clothes. She does basically all the cooking, and she’s a retired doctor that still does house calls for the neighbors sometimes.”

And bringing her up…this time, it didn’t hurt at all. There was no homesick heartache at the mention of her, just the happy imaginings of a…long-distance introduction between her and his new friend.

"Hm. Okay. I'll look around and see what I can find. It has to be something that people wouldn't get suspicious about, too. So nothing too technologically advanced or that would be insanely costly in your time. Like gold and diamonds aren't really worth anything anymore, but back then I understand it was quite limited. Hm. Well, maybe something not too mad. Does she wear jewelry? Awoken are fond of ornaments," he muses, gesturing with his fingers vaguely, a motion he intends for sparkling things.

"Hm. I know our main goal on Venus is information about Chosen Ones and portals to other places, but is there anything else you want to know while we're there? With Ren and Ghost scanning the files at a make higher rate than ourselves, we can spend time exploring other topics of interest if you like? I'm going to learn about Japan." Yeah, he already decided that. He's gotta be culturally sensitive, Aoba.

“She’s a pretty practical lady,” Aoba responded to the first, chuffing at the thought of presenting her some kind of expensive gift. He didn’t imagine she’d be completely unappreciative, but she might act skeptical or throw in some lecture about the value of money, first. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with more than a simple necklace and a hairstick.”

The second, on the other hand, was another of those left-field changes in topic. Or it was until Declan ended with his desire to learn more about Japan, bringing a brief tightness to Aoba’s chest.

“I—I don’t know, I didn’t think about anything like that,” he faltered briefly, flattered or a little embarrassed or somewhere between the two. Should he learn about Ancient Rome, then? No, that had no bearing on anything at all. Declan was just a person, now.

"Hm...would it bother you terribly if I spent a little time reading?" he asked, reaching up and rubbing one earlobe lightly, brows perked in questioning.

"I don't want you to be be bothered or bored. It would be terribly quiet if I just sat there in silence for a few hours. Hm. Maybe...I shouldn't. I'm supposed to be spending this time with you, not indulging my curiosity. There are a lot of displays and things still intact at the library. We can look through those? It's sort of like a museum at this point..."

“You don’t have to be talking to be good company, Declan,” came another amused chuckle, Aoba waving a hand dismissively before tucking them together, thumbs hooked in the hammock. Without gravity to hold them down, he had to be all the more conscious about where his arms were drifting off to.

“Just because nothing’s coming to me off the top of my head, that doesn’t mean I won’t think of something while we’re there. I could just grab something random and browse around. You don’t have to act like you have to entertain me. If I can look over to where you are and see you’re enjoying yourself, that’s still spending time together.”

"Really? Hm." he asked, glancing over curiously before smiling faintly and looking back to the stars. That was...really nice to hear. Declan talked a great deal with Aoba, far more than he ever did with other people aside from Mac, and that was because the man harassed him incessantly. The Titan liked being in places such as the bar, but he didn't want to talk as much as listen, watch sometimes. He liked reading and being quiet and just sharing space. The times Declan didn't feel alone at home were when he tucked himself onto the cushioned nook against the balcony window at home and read something he'd found in one of his many patrols. He liked Little Women the most, but he'd read a lot of pre-Golden Age literature just because he could. The world wasn't so silent and lonely when filled with the words of great authors, and while he was a little slow at reading and retaining things, once he did it stayed.

"I wish I lived in your time," he stated abruptly, sighing softly. He didn't elaborate on the statement, just making it and leaving it at that, but he thought that if he had, he'd very much have liked Aoba to find him. Maybe whoever he was before could have used a friend, too. Especially one like the other man. He wondered, would the other him have been such a coward with his feelings? In the past, was he brave and bold? Or just as alone? Sometimes he pondered those things, but he never wanted to know badly enough to ask Ghost, and he knew Guardians weren't supposed to, anyways. Still...he wondered if the Declan of before were a better man that Aoba may have looked to, romantically.

See, it was comments like that which could leave one wondering just how the train of Declan’s thoughts worked sometimes. A long enough discussion on one topic, and then bam, non sequitur. But it wasn’t bad, just…curious. Quirky.

He slowly nodded, thinking that yeah, that would have been nice. No war. No being raised from the dead over and over. Cramped conditions, turf wars, and an island you couldn’t leave, but—no Darkness. And maybe even the Traveler would visit in their time and render all the things that Aoba could complain about obsolete. If they were both in his time together, he wouldn’t know anything about the time of Darkness that he would never live to see.

Except if Declan wanted to say that being brought back by the Traveler was worthwhile just for the chance to meet him, then it was equally true that-

“Except, if you were, you wouldn’t be here to help me right now. You’d be stuck back home without me.”

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